DDO causes computer to restart randomly

[Honshirabe]

So I submitted a bug report on this but thought I'd put a thread up in case there are more people like me who are trying to find others with a similar problem. Since the new update DDO will randomly restart the whole computer. I only started playing a month and a half or so ago but this problem has only been happening since the update. It crashes anywhere between 5 minutes in up to about an hour, though it seems to take ~20 mins average now. I was considering buying some VIP time but this makes it impossible to play. My computer does not do this unless DDO is open and not with any other games. Since it reboots the computer instantly there are no logs (at least that I've found). I wiped my hard drive and did a clean install of windows and the problem persists in the same way. I've also dusted out the inside of the computer and checked to make sure fans are all working properly. I've had more rarely some instances where the computer freezes rather than rebooting, which I see other people reporting more often than my problem of instant involuntary reboot.

Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 2.6Ghz
3.25GB RAM
P5N7A-VM mobo with onboard Nvidia GeForce 9300 video
Windows XP SP 3

Also sorry to any of you I left in the lurch on quests due to this bug.

[kitselli]

I'm no techie, but it sounds like either the on-board video can't handle the updated material, or that you may have some capacitors starting to go on the mother board.

Do a complete power down, including unplugging. Then carefully inspect every square inch of mobo you can see clearly. Check for anything that should be mini-beer can shaped (or cylindrical if you prefer) including a flat bottom.

If any of those components' has the top starting to 'bulge' or is more triangular in shape; it may be the mobo.

Capacitors can fail after 10 seconds or 2 hours... They're funny that way. And each time you fire up can be different. Although the longer it's on, the more likely it'll fail if you tax the resources - like loading DDO.

Other than that, you'll have to have one of these half orc wizards help you...

Kit

[Marcus-Hawkeye]

Check your event log around the times the restarts occur. It might help. Check to see if any minidump files appear in c:\windows\minidump. You can analyze those files to find out what's causing the issue. Beyond that, it could be anything.

Updated your drivers? Any recent windows updates? Overheating?
You can use http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ to read temperatures if you don't already have a way to.

[MaxwellEdison]

Before ripping apart your computer to Inspector clouseau your MoBo, make sure you have the most up to date graphics driver. Sounds like the driver might be crashing forcing the restart.

[psi0nix]

A game issue should not be re-booting your machine, that sounds like something a little more serious. Usually game issues should blue screen at the most serious or freeze the machine.

I would stongly suggest checking the event viewer, (Control panel / administrative tools / computer management / Event viewer) Look for any errors / warnings and what they are related to.

Also a temperature monitoring program would be a good idea, (just in case), get a program called Prime95, <- stress test, and something like Aida 64 to check that the machine is not overheating. You can get free temp monitoring programs aswell, but Aida has alot of information that be useful in it. Including voltages which can be handy for diagnosing a faulty PSU.

Basically run the temp monitor, keep it open on your desktop so you can see it (trial version will do, as you mainly want to see your CPU temp) and then run a pass through Prime95 - be ready to shut it off if the temp gets too high. For your processor I would not be allowing it to go more than 75 - 80 degrees tops (celcius).

This could be such a large number of things, but RAM / PSU are the usual culprits of a machine shutting down like that in game (very general statement).

You can try using only one stick of ram at a time to test them.

Your powersupply could be faulty, if you have a spare (it's a long shot but you might) use that for a couple days and see if the problem persists.

Also looking at your RAM amounts, it's probably better to get a 64 bit version of windows on there as having 4gb in it with only 3.25 available due to OS restrictions is a little bit of a waste.

(not sure what the financial situation is but, you can pick up a whole new box with better specs for a couple hundred). Not that replacing a machine is the best method of fixing something, but with that hardware .... if you can afford to throw a few hundred at a new box it would certainly enhance your gaming experience.


When you say "reboots by itself" do you mean it just goes "off / on" no bluescreen , no dialogs or anything, just in game one second, post screen the next ?

This is highly indicitive of a faulty power supply.

[Honshirabe]

Nothing looks out of whack on the motherboard.

There's no C:\windows\minidump created since reinstalling windows even though DDO has crashed, no Save Dump events in the event viewer, and no logs of the computer restarting in the event viewer.

All drivers are up to date. No updates except for the DDO update when this problem started to occur.

No overheating of the computer based on monitoring software, BIOS readouts, and feeling around in the machine.

I don't know how it could be the RAM or PSU if DDO is the only thing that has this effect on my computer but it's reasonable to suspect them otherwise.

Frankly I don't expect this problem to get solved. I know I could basically buy a new computer but that's not a viable solution. It baffles me that DDO is the only thing crashing my computer like this and my only small shred of hope is that there's something flagrant in the new update that might get fixed.

EDIT: In response to the last post before mine here, yes it goes straight from the game to black screen and POST messages.

[psi0nix]

Depending on load the components will draw more power, if the other games are not as "heavy" as DDO then your hardware won't draw as much power and possibly not cause the fault.

Going from playing to post screen with no logs / no errors (apart from the usual kernel-panic), I'm leaning towards power supply being the issue, PSU issues can be intermittent and random. It could go on for weeks / months or it could die tomorrow, there is no real way of telling when it will finally let go.

If you have any sort of voltage monitoring software (Aida does this), you can watch for any erratic spikes / drops in voltage supply which can be an indicator of a fault waiting to happen.

DDO is capable of using reasonably powerful hardware, and in that way is able to tax lower end systems quite a bit, much more than say Counter strike or games like that.

Again this requires a higher power output from your PSU>


The motherboard could also be at fault with the onboard GPU, I've had bad experiences with these in the past, on a side note always go for a motherboard with no onboard graphics and use a PCI-E card instead.

[AZgreentea]

It might be your Mobo.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131348

Reading the reviews, there are a lot of reports of system lockups and such after installing this board. I would search do some more research into tech sites to see if you can isolate any manufacture issues people have been having. The reviews seem to indicate issues with the onboard GPU and some issues with heat. Of course, they are several years old now. Still, heat is the #1 killer of GPU's.

[Marcus-Hawkeye]

What directx is the game using? Try the a different version.

[Dhalgren]

Also make sure your BIOS is up to date. On my laptop (which is just over a year old) Windows 7 doesn't like my BIOS and builtin USB hubs. Oddly enough it seems to be using Skype for long periods of time which cause the instadeaths.

Mostly it just falls over totally dead, but once it did actually manage to just BSOD instead.

Happily, it's rock solid when playing DDO

[Marcus-Hawkeye]

Nothing looks out of whack on the motherboard.

There's no C:\windows\minidump created since reinstalling windows even though DDO has crashed, no Save Dump events in the event viewer, and no logs of the computer restarting in the event viewer.

All drivers are up to date. No updates except for the DDO update when this problem started to occur.

No overheating of the computer based on monitoring software, BIOS readouts, and feeling around in the machine.

I don't know how it could be the RAM or PSU if DDO is the only thing that has this effect on my computer but it's reasonable to suspect them otherwise.

Frankly I don't expect this problem to get solved. I know I could basically buy a new computer but that's not a viable solution. It baffles me that DDO is the only thing crashing my computer like this and my only small shred of hope is that there's something flagrant in the new update that might get fixed.

EDIT: In response to the last post before mine here, yes it goes straight from the game to black screen and POST messages.

If it's happening before the os has a chance to do something then I agree that something physically wrong with the hardware. These are more difficult to diagnose. I've never really liked software or bios voltage readings as sometimes the issues occurs so quickly the readings don't show it. You can manually check the voltages on a power supply with a multimeter. This seems like a decent explanation:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolso...multimeter.htm
I've tested thousands of power supplies in this fashion, but I'm always very VERY careful as they can pump out a lot of juice. If you are not comfortable doing this on any level, don't bother.

Also, with respect to capacitors, they can also "bulge" at the botttom. it can be difficult to see, but check to see if the bottoms of the capcitors are leaky or strangely shaped.

You can also try running "bare" and just have the HD attached and try running it that way. Disconnect all other devices, including usb stuff (cept mouse/keyb of course) and any additional cards.

Someone suggested a bios update. This can also help. I've recently been running into problems with older BIOSes and bluescreens at work. Most manufacturers have windows based bios updaters.

[fco-karatekid]

A game issue should not be re-booting your machine, that sounds like something a little more serious. ...
You can try using only one stick of ram at a time to test them...
When you say "reboots by itself" do you mean it just goes "off / on" no bluescreen , no dialogs or anything, just in game one second, post screen the next ?

This is highly indicitive of a faulty power supply.

My first thought was a stick of RAM has gone bad, second was a bad video call causes the OS to puke, and the third was power supply O(i.e. your video card ramped up suddenly beyond your power supply's capabiities, machine goes off due to PSU faulting.

Search for memtest86, a free downloadable program - you can create a bootable cd, boot to memtest86and check each stick individually. It correctly identified a bad stick of RAM that was only a year old for me a while back. Manufacturer swapped out for cost of postage et voila, all was fixed.

I am less inclined to believe bad video call after re-reading your post, since it appears you did a full wipe and reinstall of the OS.
Hold off on troubleshooting that one, as I almost guarantee it will take forever and may not yield any results at all.

What's the power rating in watts your power supply can sustain? if 400 W or less and you have a beefy video card, be suspicious. What is the recommended power supply rating of the card? if they are close to one another (say 15%), then REALLY suspect this as your culprit.

[Dulcimerist]

Your symptoms sound exactly like what I experienced when I've had power supply units get old and fail on me a couple of times in the past. It starts with the most resource-heavy programs (like DDO), and then it gradually starts happening with other programs.

One thing to do for sure is right-click on My Computer, click Properties, Advanced System Settings, Advanced, Startup and Recovery, Settings, and then under System Failure make sure to uncheck the box next to Automatically Restart. That will get your system to quit rebooting itself automatically so that you can be able to read any error messages that pop up.

This free program will help you monitor voltages, temperatures, etc. in your system:
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Could you post your DXDiag report? That would give us better information so that we can help you better.

[Honshirabe]

So I forgot what settings I had originally set in the options in DDO. Also unsure if any options reset with the update. I set graphics quality to medium and so far it hasn't crashed since (I made a level 4 barbarian from scratch without crashes). This was probably the best I could have hoped for!!!

I figure it may have been something squirrely with the GPU after all. BTW someone asked about Direct X and my GPU only supports up to DX9 I believe so that's what's running.

Thanks for all the help. Hopefully this thread might come in handy for someone else down the line between all the good suggestions here and the solution that worked for me.

[Sarinesis]

There are a lot of silly and stupid comments about what the problem might be or is and what to do about it!

FIRST: DO NOT open your case and waste time inspecting your capacitors. If they were going bad it would be obvious and would affect everything, not just DDO.

SECOND: If it's only occurring when DDO is running, then it IS related to DDO. Doesn't mean DDO is rebooting the system, but triggering some other fail-safe that is rebooting the system.

THIRD: Leave your BIOS alone! Every time you update the BIOS, you take a risk of bricking your system. It's rare and the newer BIOS chipsets generally have an untouchable core that can be used to restore a functional version of the full BIOS. Still, the only time you ever update your BIOS is if you need to in order to install and support a CPU, memory or other BIOS dependent hardware not supported by the older version. If your current version has no issues and supports your hardware, leave it alone!

FOURTH: The issue started with a recent update to DDO and everything else still runs fine, just like it all did before the update. Therefore, unless you change your PSU when you updated DDO, your Power Supply is not the issue. It was adequate before and remains adequate now!

FIFTH: Common sense IS still useful!

SIXTH: Everyone suggesting hardware has gone bad is forgetting to account for one IMPORTANT fact! You stated that this only occurs with DDO. Everything else runs fine and normal. Only and issue with DDO. If your hardware was going bad, it would affect more than just DDO. I have been working on systems for over 20 years. These amateurs don't know what they're talking about and are just grasping at straws. So many of them take the approach of: Start replacing parts until we get the one that is bad. And they perform certain tasks because they know it works, but they don't understand why it works. This the way most of your so-called "experts" are these days. They don't understand the inner workings of the systems they are working on. Most of the time it works fine, because most of the time, the problems are of the "standard cause and standard fix" type. But then they get a one that is outside the realm of the "90% of all problems" scenario, they are lost and start grasping at straws, because they don't know how to diagnose it.

FINAL: I know what the issue is! When it happens, if you pay close attention, now that I am pointing it out, you will notice that the screen goes black for a few seconds before the reset occurs. It may even flutter for a couple of frames. It is you video drivers encountering a problem and forcing a full reboot to prevent possible damage. They "think" there is an overheat or overload situation occurring, because the condition they went into is very similar to what would occur if they were overheating or overloading. The problem is DDO is driving the cards with commands and data the video drivers and GPUs can't handle. Reduce DDO DirectX version to 9 and see if it changes. Completely remove the video drivers. I mean you uninstall the drivers so that your system is stuck in 640 X 480 VGA mode. Then install a completely clean driver set. When you do this, download the latest drivers direct from Nvidia.com. Don't use drivers from any place else. After updating the drivers with a CLEAN install, the problem should go away.

Yes, I realize this an old post, but this issue still occurs in 2018 and probably will continue to occur until well into the future. Updates make use of better video tech and need the latest drivers to handle it. It makes me kind of sad and dismayed every time I see the same kind of garbage for responses when there is an issue that doesn't fit within the "90% of all problems" paradigm. They try to fix software issues by messing with the hardware or fix hardware issues by messing with the software.

[C-Dog]

There are a lot of silly and stupid comments about what the problem might be or is and what to do about it!...

...and one of the silliest may be the above post which is almost SEVEN YEARS late.

[Avenir]

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to C-Dog again". Dang

[Dayle]

Latest drivers and 3000 series Nvidia GPU, and it still happens.
Takes out Folding@home too, losing valuable medical science.
And zapping anything on the desktop I haven’t saved.

Something is obviously wrong with the game, and the current developers have no idea how to fix it.

Absolutely ridiculous. Happens on no other game.
I can run Cyberpunk at max settings but not DDO.

There are a lot of silly and stupid comments about what the problem might be or is and what to do about it!

FIRST: DO NOT open your case and waste time inspecting your capacitors. If they were going bad it would be obvious and would affect everything, not just DDO.

SECOND: If it's only occurring when DDO is running, then it IS related to DDO. Doesn't mean DDO is rebooting the system, but triggering some other fail-safe that is rebooting the system.

THIRD: Leave your BIOS alone! Every time you update the BIOS, you take a risk of bricking your system. It's rare and the newer BIOS chipsets generally have an untouchable core that can be used to restore a functional version of the full BIOS. Still, the only time you ever update your BIOS is if you need to in order to install and support a CPU, memory or other BIOS dependent hardware not supported by the older version. If your current version has no issues and supports your hardware, leave it alone!

FOURTH: The issue started with a recent update to DDO and everything else still runs fine, just like it all did before the update. Therefore, unless you change your PSU when you updated DDO, your Power Supply is not the issue. It was adequate before and remains adequate now!

FIFTH: Common sense IS still useful!

SIXTH: Everyone suggesting hardware has gone bad is forgetting to account for one IMPORTANT fact! You stated that this only occurs with DDO. Everything else runs fine and normal. Only and issue with DDO. If your hardware was going bad, it would affect more than just DDO. I have been working on systems for over 20 years. These amateurs don't know what they're talking about and are just grasping at straws. So many of them take the approach of: Start replacing parts until we get the one that is bad. And they perform certain tasks because they know it works, but they don't understand why it works. This the way most of your so-called "experts" are these days. They don't understand the inner workings of the systems they are working on. Most of the time it works fine, because most of the time, the problems are of the "standard cause and standard fix" type. But then they get a one that is outside the realm of the "90% of all problems" scenario, they are lost and start grasping at straws, because they don't know how to diagnose it.

FINAL: I know what the issue is! When it happens, if you pay close attention, now that I am pointing it out, you will notice that the screen goes black for a few seconds before the reset occurs. It may even flutter for a couple of frames. It is you video drivers encountering a problem and forcing a full reboot to prevent possible damage. They "think" there is an overheat or overload situation occurring, because the condition they went into is very similar to what would occur if they were overheating or overloading. The problem is DDO is driving the cards with commands and data the video drivers and GPUs can't handle. Reduce DDO DirectX version to 9 and see if it changes. Completely remove the video drivers. I mean you uninstall the drivers so that your system is stuck in 640 X 480 VGA mode. Then install a completely clean driver set. When you do this, download the latest drivers direct from Nvidia.com. Don't use drivers from any place else. After updating the drivers with a CLEAN install, the problem should go away.

Yes, I realize this an old post, but this issue still occurs in 2018 and probably will continue to occur until well into the future. Updates make use of better video tech and need the latest drivers to handle it. It makes me kind of sad and dismayed every time I see the same kind of garbage for responses when there is an issue that doesn't fit within the "90% of all problems" paradigm. They try to fix software issues by messing with the hardware or fix hardware issues by messing with the software.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Latest drivers and 3000 series Nvidia GPU, and it still happens.
Takes out Folding@home too, losing valuable medical science.
And zapping anything on the desktop I haven’t saved.

Something is obviously wrong with the game, and the current developers have no idea how to fix it.

Absolutely ridiculous. Happens on no other game.
I can run Cyberpunk at max settings but not DDO.

I believe it is rather vice versa : DDO is simply too old for current computers / graphics cards, and this newer hardware is simply unable to handle it.
For example, modern graphics cards are nowadays extremely optimized for 3D object caculations - and are at the same time onsanely lame regarding bitmap graphics (or operations with bitmap graphics in general), which no-one actually notices, because nowadays no-one uses bitmap graphics anymore, only 3D objects.

And DDO has far more bitmaps than complex 3D objects in it.

[Arkat]

Buncha necromongers you all are.